The Purge Deepens, Literary Agent Fired Merely For Having Parler and Gab Accounts
The purge is getting more personal and destructive with time. This is not going to end well.
We have covered a gazillion cases since last spring of people ‘cancelled’ for social media posting or public statements that offend the dominant leftist orthodoxy on campus and elsewhere. It’s very personal combat, almost always left cancelling right, and it’s setting the nation against itself.
This story though, reveals just how deep the intolerance and repression goes — a literary agent was fired not for what she said, but merely for having opened accounts on Parler and Gab to escape the stifling atmosphere on Twitter.
The claim that Parler was a platform more dangerous than Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and elsewhere, is false. It’s a convenient foil for cancel culture attacks because it became viewed as a refuge for Trump supporters fleeing or kicked off Twitter. Parler itself was deplatformed.
For Colleen Oefelein, just opening the accounts was enough to get fired. Its not the first time she’s been attacked:
Newsweek reported:
The president of a literary agency based in New York City said Monday on Twitter that one of the agency’s employees was terminated after her use of conservative social media sites Parler and Gab was discovered.
Colleen Oefelein, who identified herself on Twitter as an associate literary agent with the Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency, appeared to confirm her termination in a tweet on Monday morning.
“Well thanks Twitter and @JDLitAgency,” Oefelein wrote. “I just got fired because I’m a Christian and a conservative.” …
“The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency was distressed to discover this morning, January 25th, that one of our agents has been using the social media platforms Gab and Parler. We do not condone this activity, and we apologize to anyone who has been affected or offended by this,” De Chiara wrote. “The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency has in the past and will continue to ensure a voice of unity, equality, and one that is on the side of social justice.”
“As of this morning, Colleen Oefelein is no longer an agent at The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency,” De Chiara’s Twitter thread concluded.
Well thanks Twitter and @JDLitAgency. I just got fired because I’m a Christian and a conservative.
— Colleen Oefelein (@eerie_o) January 25, 2021
The tweets were deleted, but this needs to be seen and understood. People still say this is a made-up issue. How can accumulated actions like this *not* have an effect on our intellectual and artistic culture? pic.twitter.com/4K22NqO7FA
— Thomas Chatterton Williams ? ? (@thomaschattwill) January 26, 2021
Book and Film Globe notes the role of an anonymous Twitter troll in getting her fired:
The agency, founded by De Chiara in 2001, works on mostly children’s and young adult literature, and notably has repped soap opera actors from the Young and the Restless and General Hospital.
@YAWhispers, whose bio reads, “the Lady Whistledown of YA,” in a reference to the Bridgerton series, included Oefelein’s outed tweets in a master list of literary agents to avoid. Among them is Marisa Corvisiero, who fired her entire staff last year after her own controversial tweets. However noble in intent, the account’s anonymity was a sticking point for critics of the firing.
“A random anonymous Twitter account, which calls itself “YA Whispers,” informs Jennifer that one of her agents simply *used* a social media platform and therefore should be terminated—and Jennifer actually goes and fires her then publicly brags about it!” wrote Thomas Chatterton Williams in a series of tweets. “Absolute madness.”
Spiked notes:
There is currently not any suggestion that Oefelein actually posted anything objectionable on either of these platforms.
The purge is getting more personal and destructive with time. This is not going to end well.
https://youtu.be/TT37b6btv-o
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Find a contingency litigator and sue the company. Look to conservative companies for employment.
While it will probably take a decade for decline to become obvious, get the hell out of NY.
I’m pretty sure she’s an at will employee but since the owner of the agency got on twitter and blasted out her firing to the entire world and then used language suggesting she was a bigot and a racist for using Parler and Gab, there probably is a valid lawsuit in this.
Sounds more like a job for a practitioner of Natural Law.
Better yet, Gab and/or Parler should sue de Chiara for libel.
She should sue for defamation
I think a Constitutional issue can be raised. Get the lawsuits going like wildfire – let this sick people defend them.
Good grief…are we just going to sit here in silence and let this happen?
I’m sick of “our side” capitulating on every front and cowering in fear because no one wants violence of any sort. We are dealing with evil people that refuse to play nice, and use our “nice” against us.
It’s time to break a few eggs.
This is a tough call, it cannot be allowed to continue, so far rule of law has been piss poor, and fixing the problem will likely be very painful for everyone.
What should happen, right now, is migrating to more friendly jurisdictions.
I have a friend who lives in New York, owns a company with a few thousand employees, who is thinking about moving.
Been there, done that, doesn’t work. Locusts move too, and in greater numbers than you do. Cases in point: Colorado, Arizona, Georgia, Oregon, Washington.
“are we just going to sit here in silence and let this happen?”
We? I’m positive I don’t “have standing.” How about you?
or kneecaps, or skulls, whatever.
“The purge is getting more personal and destructive with time. This is not going to end well.”
Any predictions on how this will end?
With the secession of several states, if violence is to be averted. (Although an attempt by some states to secede could, if resisted, bring violence. But allowing some states to secede would relieve some of the pressure.)
Secession is a viable strategy only if you solve the problem of locust immigration.
In the long term, yes. But secession will become a seriously considered option, and it would not surprise me to see some states actually make an attempt.
And in the short term, you have officially agreed to cede the locusts territory.
Didn’t work for Chamberlain, and won’t work for us.
Haven’t watched the webcast yet you had with Parler.
They are hated so much by the left that I’m begging for them to be successful.
Yup, hope they come back
What about Gab?
Apparently, that will only happen when the judiciary stops being as corrupt as the rest of the government
What we as a nation are undergoing now is a process of acceleration to open conflict and violent political clashes. It does not go well or end well. The will to win determines the winner.
young adult literature
“young adult” literature is romance novels for tween and teenage girls. The people who write it – and apparently represent it – are also teenage girls. Intellectually.
Abortion culture. A life… employee unworthy of employment. Such a “burden” h/t Obama. There are precedents.
This boils my blood. Can’t possibly be legal. Some brave soul in NY should organize a picket line and protest this agency… as Maxine would say, make a crowd and let THEM know they aren’t welcome anywhere.
What a pile of crap she is. Freedom of expression did not find its way into their narrow-minded view of Constitutional rights.
There must be a legion of “cancelled” literary people, editors, tekkies, and academics out there. Someone should get the capital, make some hires, and reat new companies and platforms.
In the meantime, may antitrust and similar suits rain on BigTech and the established publishing industry like July Monsoon rains From Okinawa to Sumatra.
It’s been on my mind for a long time that by now there are enough cancelled academics floating around for somebody to put together one or more new kickass colleges.
This is a symptom of the moral decay in our Western societies. It is a product of incessant indoctrination starting in kindergarten, continuing through almost all levels and types of education, and never stopping because the “free press” has become largely unfree as a dishonest propaganda machine – all attacking the foundation of Western society.
We’re part of a society seemingly attempting to get to a state of total anomie as fast as possible. To compound the internal lurch toward disparate and conflicting norms and values we are now propagating the unrestricted import of even more disparate norms and values.
Would anybody depraved enough to fire someone for using the wrong brand of anything have dared to expose their depravity to the American public a mere ten years ago? Hardly. And “in 2021” someone is bragging about it in a very public forum and can be sure that a horde of fellow travelers will applaud.
Where societal norms have broken down to this point legal norms are needed. The victim here could try to sue because of racial discrimination.
I’m half-joking, of course. Half, mind you.
The argument, any consistent progressive judicial activist would find convincing: she was fired for being white: white people have “white privilege” therefore they are more likely to be racist and not “a voice of unity, equality, and one that is on the side of social justice.” This disparate impact of the stated reason for the termination is prima facie evidence of its being motivated by the race or color of the employee.
She need not even be white, she could be a full-blooded 1/1024th Indian, and the argument still would work. After all, the law does not require animus to call discrimination discrimination. And
And that is all that counts.
Of course, finding an honest and progressive activist judge who is consistent is a task that should prove extremely difficult if not impossible to accomplish.
Public forum probably means cause for lawsuit, libel and slander, hostile work environment, civil rights….
The Left is determined to drive all political opposition underground by ruining the life of anyone who disagrees with it.
Call it The Chinese Communist Party Way.
When political opposition goes underground it becomes subversive. And a real ‘Resistance’ forms. Unlike the Dem’s phony narcissistic ‘resistance’ against Trump.
People will start doing anything and everything they can to undermine the authoritarian system the socialist fascists forced on them.
And the left will start eating it’s own as they increasingly blame each other for the things they cannot control.
The ChiCom system cannot work in America, a country with a long tradition of personal freedom. How long it will take to reject it and how much damage will be done in the process remains to be seen.
I’m not so sure the Chinese Communist system couldn’t work here. We’ve been on a rapid forced march to this since Roe v. Wade, when SCOTUS imposed a “law of the land” that couldn’t have been passed legislatively in all of the states. At first constrained by the trimester system, it rapidly morphed into abortion at will until birth. Conservative and classically liberal scholars and pundits warned when university presidents yielded to students who at first peacefully and then violently protested against anyone they disagreed with that the logical conclusion would be the type of censorship the left gleefully and vengefully is imposing now. The speed with which this has occurred in a country with our long tradition of free speech (and misinformed understanding of the First Amendment) is astonishing. No one speaks for us, because they fear being the next to be canceled — a fear grounded in reality. Anyone expecting the ascendant left to rescue us is delusional. The leftist powers that be need a compliant and silenced opposition to impose their will; the “cancel culture” accomplishes that. Our only real hope is for an ending like the Cultural Revolution, where things went so far so fast that people turned on its leaders. Only hen will it stop.
This is discrimination, and unconstitutional. Start the lawsuits, and get them going up the appellate ladder as soon as possible.
Faced with doing one’s job with integrity, John Roberts is probably peeing in his pants, figuring out how to run away.